It's interesting that your avatar is such a good match for the post. LOL was the first thing i thought while reading…

First you are very late to "the party", we had a bunch of these topics with unavoidable discussion flow months ago, so this is either a bad try at bringing heated topics up again or you have only now noticed that devil isn't here any longer, which, i would say, is unlikely given your praise.

Second, there is no such thing as a completely tolerant community - beside a one man community maybe. With such a black-white talk you want to get heated discussions rolling, not fruitful ones. It's like saying all germans are nazis and eat sauerkraut all day, all white americans are KKK-members, ubuntu users are dumb and/or everyone hates unity. Saying that would be by definition utterly crap.

Third, tolerance is a lot more needed in arch - than in debian-universe given that (close to) everything is in the archive in debian while arch has a minimum core and everything else unofficially provided. So the users basically have to compile for themselves, applying crude hacks and stuff like that every sane minded debian-user would cry bitterly. So, what you claim to be tolerance can be equally translated as ignoring of best practices. That's a community-principle in arch, but not in debian and therefore we "fight" against practice violations. If you prefer the non-best-practice path, you are just wrong here, regardless of how "pity and sad" that might be.

Fourth: Specially regarding "Devil" and a bunch of others - that's a conflict on the core level, you have that all the time - otherwise a lot of distros wouldn't even exist. In fact, aptosid wouldn't exist without a bunch of conflicts. Ubuntu wouldn't exist without conflicts. I am sure Arch hasn't started as a Linux From Scratch out of the blue either…
At some point you have to agree that we disagree and live on. Looks like we do that, maybe you can do that, too.

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

But in the end we can see that a step in our implication series is faulty. Or in other words: In which world is distrowatch an authority in distro-popularity?

The error becomes more obvious if we do line 3 to 4 in more detail:
x² - y² = xy - y² | third binomial formula on left side
(x + y)(x - y) = xy - y² | factor out y on right side
(x + y)(x - y) = y(x - y) | Dividing by (x - y)

So lets ask more obvious: How high is the popularity of windows on this site? On any site? How many complain about XYZ on Windows? … Compare it to how many users it has… Just because you hear some complains very loudly doesn't mean everyone is complaining…

Lets face it: Ubuntu is the Windows in Linux World, and as people slowly accept that "20** is the year of linux desktop" wasn't true in the last ten years and will not in many upcoming years, they search for an "easier" target: You can't fight against Mac - that would be a fight against Apple iAnd iEveryone iLoves iApple! So whats left? Fighting against Slackware and Gentoo? Haha, good one…

If you haven't got it by now: What is the value of (x - y) and do you think it is allowed to devide by this value?

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

Android doesn't seem to have an interest in upstreaming their changes to the linux kernel given that they were thrown out of the (staging) tree and implement certain stuff in a conflicting way… So from the kernel side this looks more like a fork.

And beside that then we talk about Linux we usually mean GNU/(eg)libc/Linux - which Android is not - GPL software is avoided at (close to) all costs if a more liberal software is available or can be (re)written from scratch with BSD or a similar license.

It's a huge problem if a company is big enough to write an entry software stack from scratch just to avoid reusing GPL licensed software: Your smartphone manufacturer hasn't provided you with an upgrade to the new shiny android version? Why? Because you should buy the new smartphone instead - the proprietary features (and security updates) are only available on the new one…

Okay, good shouldn't be the enemy of better, but while Android might be more open than the (popular) others doesn't mean it's linux on the phone. It's just a linux-kernel based os on the phone.

There is still a long way to go before open smartphones will hit mainstream, but i hope they will make it some day. My GTA02 still works to my liking btw and the openmoko community is currently preparing GTA04 rollout, in case someone is interested.

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

oddball

Post subject:Posted: 08.12.2011, 10:40

Joined: 2010-09-11
Posts: 109
Location: Skåne, Sweden
Status: Offline

Now we are OT but

Quote:

My GTA02 still works to my liking btw and the openmoko community is currently preparing GTA04 rollout, in case someone is interested.

that's more interesting. I didn't know there was a open source telephone. But as I can see there is no new telephone coming, only a mainboard to the old one or?

DonKult

Post subject:Posted: 08.12.2011, 16:58

Team Member

Joined: 2010-09-02
Posts: 482

Status: Offline

oddball wrote:

Now we are OT but

Quote:

My GTA02 still works to my liking btw and the openmoko community is currently preparing GTA04 rollout, in case someone is interested.

that's more interesting. I didn't know there was a open source telephone. But as I can see there is no new telephone coming, only a mainboard to the old one or?

OT yepp, but i think it wasn't on topic right from the start, so never mind - and yes: producing a case is too expensive (in small quantities) currently so the GTA4 is for now only available as a "GTA02-upgrade-kit" basically replacing parts like the mainboard but reusing case, touchscreen and a bunch of smaller parts like gps antenna. On the good side is that quiet a few (unsatisfied) GTA02 costumers are still selling their phone on ebay and co usually for less than 100€. New is usually >= 200€ …

But as i said, i wouldn't say that these are mainstream ready. I wouldn't even say that they are ready for "linux-people". Nerds and Developers will properly like it as a toy - and the freaks will use it as a phone daily… In that way it's good that GTA04 is only available as upgrade-kit so far. A few "normal" people picked the gta02 up as they thought it would be a smartphone just as good as a smartphone from a big brand. That will properly not happen this time…

(For myself - it doesn't fit the budget - especially as i am not a big (smart)phone user. Maybe the budget changes until april, but i guess it's more likely that i will end up waiting for a second batch or a used one… And to be fair, the self-build part worries me a bit, too. I usually suck at manual labour…)

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

Whether it's the content-deliverers, the software makers, service deliverers and/or gadget makers, they all want to lock you in. Be it via DRM, 'app-stores', SDKs, proprietary connectors, with an unhealthy dose of influence in the legal world.

The only good thing that can be said about Android is that it's not nearly as locked as the majority of other mobile OSs but it does require a very positive attitude to see that.

Freedom demands a constant vigilance because the big corporations will always try to wall you in. Vendor lock-in is profitable and it takes away the sharp edge of competition, just like a monopoly or other ways of market dominance/influence do.

...Freedom demands a constant vigilance because the big corporations will always try to wall you in. Vendor lock-in is profitable and it takes away the sharp edge of competition, just like a monopoly or other ways of market dominance/influence do.

DonKult, interesting how not 24 hours ago I was about to ask what's your take on webOS and now there's a new twist in the story of that OS...

Anyway, from what I understand, webOS also wasn't "Linux on the phone" in the same sense that Android isn't. Even though there were GPL-ed stuff in it (opensource.palm.com). I had no idea Android doesn't contain anthing GPL-ed or did I misunderstand something?

But even before the announcement of open sourcing webOS I liked how Palm and later HP embraced and empowered the community. Today's announcement only supports that. What I don't know is the situation with Android in that regard and as I see you're quite knowledgeable about it, I'm hoping you're aware of webOS too so you can draw a parallel.

Nahh, i just followed the development of certain commercial abundant hardware as these are usually "toys" i can either get for free or for a few bucks from someone who upgraded to the latest and greatest or just no longer need it… A mobile (smart)phone/tablet is a toy for me because i prefer to be not available/online all the time and do a phone call ones in a blue moon. Or in other words: I am not on facebook nor on google+, so i simple have no need for a smartphone to update my status and connect with my "friends"…

Android: Every developer is free to publish his apps under the GPL - so there is GPL stuff on android. All i said is that the android community tries to avoid GPL as it requires publishing the source, so specially the lower-level components aren't GPL'ed and therefore modifiable by the provider without a need to ever publish the changes. That's somehow needed to make it easier to be accepted by many companies, but it allows those companies to grab whatever Android community provides, put their own development on top and sell it without ever even trying to push their development back to the community (It also allows adding "phone-home" tools, but heh, no company would do that…). That's normal, linux itself is fragmented into different companies (=distros) doing there own stuff and not all give back. That's why i prefer a distro in which i know everything is given back (or at least available to take it back) like debian. You never know than a company losses interest in whatever they have done earlier and leave you alone with a previously very expensive thingy you can now only use as a doorblocker. You have got nothing if you could upgrade the kernel on your device (because the kernel is free) if e.g. the sound driver and battery management is closed source… (thats e.g. the case in Nokia's N810 which shipped with Meego)

WebOS: Interesting concept, but never seen it "in action", so can't really comment. We will see what this will end up being.
If i understood correctly apps aren't made in yet another hard to port language. If thats true i would like it, as this means we could get some of the apps into debian allowing every touchscreen device to use it. It's something i dislike with Android, iOs, Windows Phone, … the applications are basically written only for one specific device(class). A nogo for me who tries hard to get the same applications running on all his devices so he only needs to know one operation system and one set of tools.

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

Maybe HP could have a winner with WebOS, which recently was on the brink of death when HP had decided to kill the TouchPad off but has now changed its mind. Opensourcing WebOS could be very well the kick in the pants it needs to gain traction in the mobile device market. Now what device makers will consider using WebOS? Hopefully the major players will try it out and if they do well with it then WebOS can whip iOS and Android at their own game.